President Obama has done a lot of things that have damaged the country during his presidency, but this is up there on the list of the worst.

U.S. Sen. John McCain released a statement on the reports that say that Obama airlifted $400 million to Iran in January at virtually the same time that four American citizens who’d been held prisoner by the Islamic Republic for years were released. The events came a week after U.S. Navy sailors who’d been taken captive by Iran were freed.

“The Obama Administration’s airlift of $400 million in cash to Iran is disturbing, but hardly surprising given its long record of concessions to America’s adversaries. Whatever the Administration may claim, it is clear that this payment was a ransom for Americans held hostage in Iran.

Just like the Administration’s reckless nuclear deal, this cash payment incentivized further belligerent Iranian behavior, such as the arrests of two more Iranian-Americans. It also added $400 million to the coffers of the world’s number-one state sponsor of terrorism at a time when it is actively working to destabilize the Middle East and undermine U.S. national security interests.

Money is fungible. The Iranian regime now has an additional $400 million to support Bashar Assad’s slaughter of people in Syria; to fund militias and terrorists in places like Iraq and Yemen; to funnel arms to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that seek to destroy the state of Israel, and to buy advanced military capabilities to threaten the United States and our regional partners. This is all thanks to the Obama Administration’s reckless and foolish efforts to curry favor with our enemies in Iran.”

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Back then, Obama claimed that we don’t negotiate with terrorists but this new information calls that into question entirely.

The $400 million was just the first installment in the $1.7 billion dollar Iran deal negotiated by Obama in resolution over a 1979 arms deal with the Shah of Iran that many argued was lopsided in favor of the Iranians.

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Fox News reported that State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement that: “The negotiations over the [arms deal] settlement … were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home. Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side.”

Kirby ended with this: “The funds that were transferred to Iran were related solely to the settlement of a long-standing claim at the U.S.-Iran Claims Tribunal at The Hague,” The Wall Street Journal reported

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People were already angry over Obama’s Iran deal but if, as it appears to be, this money was to negotiate the release of hostages, it is yet another example of Obama’s hypocrisy and failures as a leader.